The sky seemed to burn with the city, flames from below reaching upwards as if from Hell itself. A faceless mask watched without expression, people running and screaming, their sounds of terror and pain like a haunting music carried upwards by the rush of the fires, which seemed to sprout from everywhere.
A man from behind approached, his face blotchy and blackened in places, his dark hair speckled with ash. His uniform hung torn from his strong body, and his mask had been pushed up to his hairline to hide his forehead, the place where it had been around his eyes untouched by the inferno.
The masked figure did not turn at the defeated sound of his friend walking up behind him. Instead he inclined his head slightly, his hat perched snugly over the cotton mask full of ever-moving ink blots. He'd been surveying the scene since the beginning, at first out of spite, but now with a small inkling of sadness.
"It's finally ending," claimed the burned man with an exhausted smile, stained with the same defeat of his walk. His soft brown eyes crinkled at the edges, reflecting the flames below. For the first time, Rorschach was beginning to see how much they'd aged. He was beginning to feel it too.
"It is," he replied with his gravelly voice. In one glove-clad hand he closed a worn old Bible with a thump of finality. "The end."
As the dark-haired man came to stand beside Rorschach, an equally dark-haired woman advanced towards them. She was dressed in a once-pristine yellow and black suit that was now splotched with dirt and dry blood. Her long, almost-black hair whipped around her stoic face in the warm winds that carried the smell of smoke and charred flesh. She stopped next to the man beside Rorschach, sighing softly as he turned his tired smile to her and gripped her hand in a way that was meant to be reassuring, but looked more like a final expression of love.
Her voice trembled. "When they said the world would go out with a bang, I didn't think they were serious." She looked between her dark-haired lover and the flames, tears shaking in the bed of her bottom eyelids, just on her thick black eyelashes. She smiled sadly, Rorschach noticed. It was almost identical to her lover's. Both looked like they'd finally given up, finally accepted this fate.
He looked down to see the two exchange a soft squeeze of their intertwined hands, then turned back to the scrambling people below just as someone landed soundlessly beside him. Rorschach snickered quietly to himself, not bothering to look to see who it was, he already knew from the blue glow.
"Well, well, well. If it isn't Dr. Manhattan, come to watch us burn out, huh?" he said with a dry, humorless chuckle. The two people beside him turned to look at the hovering blue alien man, whose blank blue eyes stared ahead expressionlessly.
"That's one way to put it, I suppose," the alien replied without turning his head. No one could tell what was going on inside him, he never smiled or even frowned. A twitch of his lips would be easier to read, if only he'd make the motion.
Rorschach simply nodded, removing his foot from where it had perched on the edge of the tall building the group stood upon and straightened, adjusting his hat and coat. "They weren't kidding when they said 'some people just want to watch the world burn'," he said in a conversational tone, as if they were discussing dinner.
For a moment, Dr. Manhattan didn't reply. He just stood there until his lips finally moved in the only motion they were capable of; up and down to speak. "It's not like we could do anything at this point," he said, his tone monochrome and flat. All three other people nodded in a unison agreement. Nothing to do now but watch the world burn before their very eyes.
There was a long bubble of silence that surrounded the small group for a long time. They all stood stock still, Dr. Manhattan in his pool of blue glowing light, Rorschach with the beat-up Bible, the dark-haired man hand-in-hand with his dark-haired woman, their faces illuminated by the glow of the multiple pyres in the streets and on the buildings in front of them.
Eventually, someone broke the thoughtful, comfortable silence. "I guess now all we have to do is jump," said the man. His woman looked about to protest, but her words died on her red lips. Dr. Manhattan had no opinion on the matter, he was like a cockroach. He couldn't die. But Rorschach snapped his head to his colleague. If he could have worn an expression, it would be one of outrage.
But the man held up a singed hand to silence him before he could begin. "Don't. Save me the risk of an after-thought." He stood up on the ledge, carefully balanced, and pulled his now crying woman up beside him. He turned to her, kissing her dirt-crusted, but still elegant cheek on the trail the tears made through the grit. "If there was a way to save you, I would. But I want this to be quick and painless for us both." He gave her another supposed-to-be-reassuring-but-wasn't smile. One that made the corner of his eyes crinkle again.
Rorschach watched as they exchanged a final kiss. It was long and passionate, with an air of desperateness about it. It was a kiss that spelled out their strong relationship in the hot air above their heads, one that said "I wish we could have been together longer". Like an unspoken apology.
The man took her into his arms, holding her in front of him. Both turned to the remaining pair with long-dead smiles. Rorschach handed the woman the Bible, and she took it with a grateful nod. Then they turned, facing their backs to the streets engulfed in fire. And they fell.
Rorschach stepped up on the ledge to watch them go. They didn't scream, or show any signs of pain. The woman's hair snaked upward in the wind of the fall, closing her beautiful, round blue eyes to the hurt and the flames. They were both soon swallowed by the enormous fire, another snack to feed its endless belly.
There was silence once again, but Rorschach did not step down from the ledge. He just looked down at the flames, at the place where his only friends had disappeared into them. He sighed, his gloved hands clenching into tight fists. Why did it have to end this way?
"Need a push?" came the cold voice of Dr. Manhattan, though it had a friendly tone to it. Rorschach looked behind him at the blue alien of a man, who stared back at him with those endless, blank eyes. Not for the first time, Rorschach wondered what lay beneath their chilling surface.
He turned back and took a deep breath and nodded. He spread his arms, but didn't turn like his friends had. He still faced the flames. He didn't hear, but felt Dr. Manhattan move behind him, waiting for him to turn, or say go.
"Make it fast," he said behind the mask. He took off his hat and handed it back to the blue man, then his gloves. "Just a quick shove. Nothing more," he commanded, then reached up with his bare hands and peeled away the cotton mask he'd always hid behind. His strong jaw was clenched beneath the stubble, his lips in a tight line. His eyes were two dark cold stones, so dark you couldn't tell where the iris ended and the pupil began. "Do it when I least expect it. When I…"
He was cut off by the shove, but wasn't caught by surprise, nor was he mad at the Dr. After all, he was just helping him. He had just enough time to spread his arms again before he too was swallowed by the hungry flames.